Medanta bags bid to open 500-bed hospital

Medanta Medicity on Thursday bagged the bid to open a super-specialty hospital on public-private partnership basis on the 7-acre land on Jai Prabha Model Blood Bank campus at Kankarbagh in Patna.

Sources said the only other bidder was Apollo Hospitals. While Apollo had offered Rs 51 lakh, Medanta has offered Rs 3 crore per annum to the state government for the lease period of 30 years. Officials said the amount would increase at a fixed rate. Also, the hospital will provide a share, albeit meagre, of its gross revenue to the state government.

Medanta will build the hospital of 500 beds, install equipment and employ manpower. Once the decision gets the cabinet nod, the sources said, Medanta authorities would complete the construction work in a year.

Medanta Medicity founder Dr Naresh Trehan has had several rounds of talks with CM Nitish Kumar earlier in this regard. Trehan wanted land on Bailey Road for the purpose, but things did not work out.

State IMA had earlier opposed Medanta coming up on government land, arguing it would end up taking patients from Bihar to its hospital at Gurgaon as some of the healthcare specialties might not be made available in Patna. However, IMA honorary secretary Dr Sanjiv Ranjan Kumar Singh told TOI on Thursday, “If Medanta opens a full-fledged hospital and patients do not become clientele for its Gurgaon-based healthcare facility, we welcome it. For, it will help people in Bihar as they won’t need to go out for complex surgeries.”